


Trust

by JenCforCarolina



Series: Auburn and the Warmind [4]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Destiny 2, felwinter's lie quest exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:47:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25094125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenCforCarolina/pseuds/JenCforCarolina
Summary: The Tyrant King told her of his tyranny. And She listened, and stayed anyway.
Series: Auburn and the Warmind [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664677
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	Trust

Auburn teeters on the edge of the dark and suffocating silence. Whatever room opens before her is vast, enough that Scout’s glow illuminates no further than the first couple segments of the catwalk ahead. The walls are evidently some kind of equipment smattered with status lights, regarding her like predatory eyes in a yawning void. Rasputin’s waypoint blinks innocently on her HUD, an orange diamond bearing his sigil. 

And she is afraid. She can taste it, and feel the pulse of adrenaline in her spine. Like when walking on the moon alone, knowing there are phantoms around every corner. Like the way it feels to explore the bowels of the Dreadnaught, or stand too close to a Taken blight.

Rasputin led her here, only Rasputin, but still…

Every one of Zavala’s stories ring in her head. Orbital bombardments on guardian forces, blast doors closing and cutting off comms, locking guardians inside. She knows these tales but had always brushed them aside. But comms _are_ down, she can’t hear Ana anymore. And he _is_ capable of those things, they were real and true, Zavala spoke with bias but not with lies. And Rasputin was capable of things even more repulsive, he just told her so. The Iron Lords did not die of hubris, Rasputin had executed them. Deliberately. It all culminated to the mounting dread that she had misplaced her faith, that she was wrong.

Yet here she stands, lingering in this doorway, toying with the patience of the warmind. 

She takes one step forward, then a second, and on the third fights the urge to scurry back to the relative safety of the hallway. Because on that step an orange glow pulses ahead and unfurls across the walls like a storm-red dawn, and the first thing her mind leaps to is _SIVA_. Fear boils over into terror, and a small voice in her heart asks: _is this what Jolder felt? Will you die like the old Iron Lords, Young Wolf? Will Saladin mourn you too?_

But it is orange, not red. It doesn’t hum like the nanites did, but instead sparks along the web of wires covering the walls of the room. The energy conducts across metal and cable to breakers and floodlights and the room lights up like a stage. Suddenly she can see it all, smaller than her mind had imagined, but still vast. And ahead, the smooth bulbous form of something that looks like a satellite. Notably not a Warsat, the shape was all wrong. It is a sphere, no hard edges to be seen.

The waypoint blinks once more, and she realizes she still has not started moving again. Rasputin is silent but for that insistence. And she isn’t dead yet, so she lets the fear wash over her, and starts walking again.

Comms crackle, Ana’s voice comes through distant then closer. “Auburn, Auburn? Lost you for a second.”

“I’m here.” She confirms, trying to keep her voice from wavering. “Everything is fine.”

“You got yourself into the one spot on the moon with the worst reception, great work.” Ana drawls, oblivious to the ominous atmosphere. “What did you find? Can you reload telemetry?”

She nods as Scout does, and she sees Ana’s watch indicator in the upper middle of her HUD. It feels like a welcoming presence, extra eyes over her shoulder. Whatever happens here, there is a witness…

“Wow.” Ana breathes. “This place is like a time capsule, all this old tech…and look at that. It’s ancient.” 

Auburn does, looks up and along the trajectory Ana marked to the thing that might be a satellite, but might not. It’s hard for her apprehension not to give way to awe as she gets closer. It is certainly large but its dwarfed by the room and alienated by its shape, rounded against Rasputin’s sharp edges. It’s anchored by long thin arms reaching to the ceilings and walls, and out of the base spills a mass of cables and wires onto the floor like the tentacles of a giant squid.

“Is that a satellite? Or part of a colony ship?” Auburn asks, hazarding an approach to investigate, trying to match the shape to familiar things in her memory.

“It’s… a pre-golden age safety AI. The casing, I mean. That’s Rasputin’s symbol on it, isn’t it?” 

“What’s a safety AI do?” She thinks she can guess, but knows better than to live on assumptions.

“Hold on, there’s schematics in here somewhere… sounds like they watched over orbital stations. Monitored fuel and life support systems, that sort of thing. So why would he have one of those down here…?”

She can hear Ana humming on the other end of the comms, deep in thought. Auburn is already a few steps ahead of her. 

“It’s his heart. Or at least his old heart.” She marvels. “He kept it down here, with all this other stuff.”

Ana makes a noise of recognition, and agreement. “This is less a time capsule, more a…. scrapbook. Memories of his past.”

Scout appears beside Auburn, silently bobs a little side to side with anticipation. He wants to explore, but she hesitates, the pricking of danger sense not entirely gone from the back of her neck.

“Fine.” She acquiesces, and waves him off. “Be respectful.” 

“Always!” He replies, and zips off to a console bank, looking for information to baffle cryptarchs with. She catches flashes on her HUD as Rasputin pings them both, his communications with Scout bleeding into the information her helmet suite displays for her outside of combat. Ana’s watch icon switches to Scout’s telemetry as well, and Auburn’s imagination conjures an amusing image of the three of them pouring over a table full of schematics and blueprints and reports. She catches herself smiling fondly and feeling like a content watcher on the outside of their study group.

She takes to strolling on her own around the little area, with the weight and respect of someone in a quiet museum, her boots echoing on the metal floor. Her fear has ebbed away, and she is left only with the deep and humbling feeling of being trusted.

“He let us in, to see all this.” She says, quietly. Ana pulses her icon to show she is listening. “He told us a story of something he was ashamed of, and has taken us to the place where he keeps the most precious things he has. And he’s letting my Ghost poke around.”

“When did he learn to be so sentimental?” Ana remarks, rhetorical. “I wish Zavala could see this.”

“I don’t think he’s ready to, yet. Maybe someday.” Auburn lays a hand gently on a dusty, defunct panel. “Scout get my… mark.”

He pauses in his examination of whatever archive he has delved into, turns to blink at her. “The special one?” It’s a question they both know the answer to, and after waiting a few moments for no response, he complies. The Mark of the Lost materializes in her hands, the threads and embroidered names resolving one after the other. It feels like it takes minutes for the fabric to rediscover it’s furrows and folds, and to fall limp in her hands. It’s always lighter than she expects.

Auburn makes her way with weighty steps to the console that is most recognizable, one that mirrors ones she’s seen in bunkers. One with what she thinks may be a camera? Possibly? Is that what that circle is?

She holds it up anyway, just in case. “I’m sentimental too. I keep names here of people who mattered. To me, I mean, mattered to me. This mark is my vault.”

The circle swivels slightly, like the lens rises up a centimeter to peer at her. She takes that as attention.

“I understand.” She assures. “I do. You showed us something close to your heart, the least I can do is return the gesture.”

For the first time since she entered the room, Rasputin’s voice rings out. It’s quieter than usual, and only makes her jump a little. “He says there’s something more.” Ana translates. “A memory of his son.”

Auburn turns as pistons fire and panels move. A low box that she had dismissed as a bare table rises up at a tilt towards her. The tiny fearful voice makes one last attempt, tells her it is the right size and shape to seal a person inside. But she sends the voice away, and with the hiss of hydraulics the doors open to reveal the hard light image of Rasputin’s son, holding a very real shotgun. 

On her HUD, Rasputin flashes a waypoint on the weapon.

“For me?” She asks anyway, and when it blinks again, reaches forward tentatively to take it. She hefts it into her hands as the light dissipates. It’s an old style, she recognizes it from the weapons Saladin sells. And emblazoned on the side is the sigil of the Iron Lords.

“You sent him to learn.” She says. “You studied us to learn… you still want to know more? About us, about humanity and the City?”

An affirmative tone crackles over the comms. 

“Alright.” She agrees. “I trust you too. Stick with me, I've been a teacher before. I'll teach you as well.”


End file.
